Members of the 15th Lok Sabha may not be too bothered about
salary hikes for themselves. Not with as many as 300 crorepatis
getting the people’s mandate this time — up 95% from 154 in the
last Lok Sabha. According to assets declared before the
Election Commission, the wealthiest MP in the new House is
Namma Nageswara Rao of TDP, elected
from Khammam in Andhra Pradesh. He is worth Rs 173 crore. Rao
is followed by Congress’s Naveen Jindal from Kurukshetra with
assets of Rs 131 crore.
Others at the top of the crorepati club are L Rajagopal
(Congress), Praful Patel (NCP),
Supriya Sule (NCP), Rajkumari Ratna
Singh of Pratapgarh (Congress) and Andhra CM Y S R Reddy’s son
Y S Rajamohan Reddy. The list of crorepatis was compiled by
National Election Watch (NEW), a
nationwide body comprising more than 1,200 NGOs and other
citizen led organizations working on electoral reforms.
The maximum number of crorepatis were found to be from Congress
(137), followed by BJP (58), SP (14)
and BSP (13). These parties are
followed by DMK and Shiv Sena.
Interestingly, JD(U) was found to have the seventh biggest
group of crorepatis in the House, ahead of ‘richer’ parties
like NCP, BJD and TDP.
Amongst states, maximum crorepatis are from UP (52), followed
by Maharastra (37), Andhra Pradesh (31) and Karnataka (25),
Bihar (17), Tamil Nadu (17) and MP (15). Gujarat, at number 10,
has sent 12 crorepatis to the new House this time — less than
the number from Punjab and Rajasthan.
